Music: Sun Dec 1

I went to the hillside, I went to pray; I know the angels done changed my name.

So begins the traditional African-American Spiritual “The Angels Changed My Name,” heard this morning in an arrangement for solo piano by the British-born composer of African descent Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Franz Liszt’s imaginative setting of the Catholic legend of St. Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds follows. According to tradition, St. Francis was walking with his companions, when he strayed off to preach a sermon to a flock of birds overhead. So impressed with the power of prayer were the birds, that they listened in rapt silence, and then flew off in all four directions, in the form of a cross. The morning’s Offertory is a beautiful setting of two Cantigas de Santa MarÍa by the twentieth-century composer Federico Mompou. The Cantigas originated in the court of Alfonso the Wise of Castile in the thirteenth century, and consist of over 400 hymns to the Virgin as well as accounts of miracles attributed to Her. Elsewhere, the CUUC Choir is on hand, with another Spiritual as well as the opening movement of Benjamin Britten’s touching A Ceremony of Carols. Read on for programming details.

Centering Music: Adam Kent, piano

“The Angels Changed My Name”

                                                African-American Spiritual, arr. by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

“The Sermon to the Birds of St. Francis”

                                                Franz Liszt

Opening Music: CUUC Choir directed by Lisa N. Meyer and accompanied by Georgianna Pappas

“Every Time I Feel the Spirit”

                                                Traditional African-American

Offertory:
Canción y danza No. 10

                                                Federico Mompou

Musical Interlude:
Procession from A Ceremony of Carols

                                                Benjamin Britten

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